They all suck now. There is nothing new to write about. There are no new tips to write in and get your $50 or free tool for (Yep I said it – there are no new ways to use baby food jars for storage or fancy ways to hold and cut your sandpaper). There is no type of furniture or utensil or toy or doohickey or thinamabob that hasn’t had 500 different projects presented for you to choose from. Now it’s just cover to cover glossy pages of advertisement – some of it masquerading as woodworking articles. It’s a place for this generation’s idols (I call them “the new Norms”) to tell us how they like this plane or that saw so they can start a sales feeding frenzy at this or that boutique tool store, or to try and tell us with a straight face why their method of layout/joinery/gluing/cutting/burning/welding is better than the 3000 methods presented in the past.

Of course you’ve always got the specialty magazines – there used to be a decent british one about routers, and there are one or two on scrollsawing and at least one on carving, cabinetmaking, wooden boats etc. If a particular area is interesting to you there might be something worth reading about.

Heck – people watch Roy Underhill show you how to make a wagon wheelI like Roy Underhill. I like him a lot. Maybe not as much as those who refer to him as St. Roy, but I still really like him. But to be honest he’s like the NASCAR of woodworking shows. There are a few die-hard fans who really like watching cars go in circles for a few hours, but most of them – whether they admit it or not – just watch it to see the crashes. That’s how I am with Mr. Underhill. His cheerful disposition is great, his skills are beyond superb, but I really tune in to see which part(s) of his body he is going to cut/stab/scrape/burn that day.

I like Roy too – took a class from him – it was awesome.But the information is still “old” but the story begs retelling… not that “there is nothing new to write about” learning old things is great too, even though they may have been told/written/demonstrated before – the experience was “New” for me.

Thus it is with magazines and books – some things are a rehash – sometimes there is new info – glues, tools etc.

Not that different than there being a movie and several books in the past 2 years about Abe Lincoln – - last I heard, it still ended with him being shot in the back of the head at Fords Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.

-- “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain